Snippet Sunday: An Age Play

This week’s Snippet Sunday* is pure promo. I’ve re-released my short story, “An Age Play,” as an eshort (digital short story) on Amazon. (It’s .99 or free for Prime members!)

It was previously published in the Cleis Press anthology Sweet Confessions, and received some good reviews. I’m still amazed I was in the same anthology with erotica greats like Portia Da Costa, Alison Tyler, Kay Jaybee, and Rachel Kramer Bussel. If you want more information on the anthology, see my “An Age Play” page.

The set-up is this:
While on a trip researching her next novel, middle-aged romance author Jean Swan encounters a young man from her ballet class. He has a proposition. What will Jean’s husband say?

I’ve chosen the opening lines from the story.

*Snippet Sunday: promoted on Twitter as #SnipSun, #SnipSunday, or #SnippetSunday, and on Facebook, as well as on various blogs (just type Snippet Sunday in your favorite search engine and see what comes up!). Authors post just a snippet — six to ten sentences — of a recently released novel, a WIP (work in progress), or an older manuscript that’s being revived. Lots of different genres are represented — romance, mystery, thriller, sci fi, fantasy, erotica, and more.

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“And then he took her in his arms.”

Every time I wrote those words, I swore I would never write them again. Yet they inexorably flowed from my fingers to the keyboard.

“And then he took her in his arms.”

It was simply part of the romance novel formula: Beautiful, virginal heroine with flowing locks and beseeching eyes falls for the extraordinarily handsome, charismatic – yet enigmatic – hero. Admittedly, it could be tiresome, except that I wrote for the Passion Flower imprint of Thorne Publishing. My characters got to have lots of sex, and I could make it as hot as I wanted, although nothing too shocking or my editor would chastise me later.

I let out a breath.

“Finished?” came my husband’s voice from the next room.

20 thoughts on “Snippet Sunday: An Age Play

  1. Oh, I love this snippet! I know exactly what she means about that line! But then how do you get the H/h into each other’s arms unless you write that sentence? Great eight!

  2. It seems to me that the intimacy of being held is important to the narrator . . . And that she’s ready to break out of her own ‘formula’. . .

    I’m heading over to Amazon to see if I’m right! 😀

  3. I so feel for her to write that sentence, which by now is a cliche. Can’t think of another way of getting from point A to point B … and beyond. But, of course then Husband calls. Great post.

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